Using a 3.5 floppy drive in a 5.25 drive.

you have to change the bios setting for the drive from 51/4 to 1.44 3.5
floppy

"Maria" wrote in message
...
Hello experts.

I am hoping someone can help me. Can I change a 5.25" Floppy drive to a
3.5"
floppy drive.
I have checked the internet and found adapters but the one I tried did not
work. Maybe it was just a bad one. My biggest problem is that I can not
access any settings. The machine using the 5.25 drive only has a 3 line
LCD
display.

Any ideas or recommendations would be very welcome. Or even if someone
knows
another news group that could help, that would be great too.

Many thanks
Maria

PS Take out MM from email to reply by email

Yeah, that's my problem really. I don't know how to get into the BIOS. It's
not a "normal" PC. It's a machine with a 3 line LCD display. I think it is
DOS based but the user interface is not PC like.


"JAD" wrote in message
rthlink.net...
you have to change the bios setting for the drive from 51/4 to 1.44 3.5
floppy

"Maria" wrote in message
...
Hello experts.

I am hoping someone can help me. Can I change a 5.25" Floppy drive to a
3.5"
floppy drive.
I have checked the internet and found adapters but the one I tried did
not
work. Maybe it was just a bad one. My biggest problem is that I can not
access any settings. The machine using the 5.25 drive only has a 3 line
LCD
display.

Any ideas or recommendations would be very welcome. Or even if someone
knows
another news group that could help, that would be great too.

Many thanks
Maria

PS Take out MM from email to reply by email

"Maria" wrote in message ...

Can I change a 5.25" Floppy drive to a 3.5" floppy drive.
I have checked the internet and found adapters but the one I
tried did not work. Maybe it was just a bad one. My biggest
problem is that I can not access any settings. The machine
using the 5.25 drive only has a 3 line LCD display.

The adapter you tried should have worked if you had disabled the
computer's built-in floppy controller, but that requires getting into
the BIOS. Somebody at www.wimsbios.com may know how to do that. Some
adapters can also be set to alternative port addresses, but this often
requires use of device driver software as well.

The standard floppy controller can handle a 3.5" drive, at least in
720K mode. MS-DOS 5.0 and higher have a feature called DRIVPARM that
can be inserted into the CONFIG.SYS file to add 3.5" support to
computers whose BIOSes handle only 5.25" drives. The format is
DRIVPARM=/D:d/F:f/i , where d=0 for A:, d=1 for B:, f=2 for 720K, f=7
for 1.44M (BIOS will probably have to be set for 1.2M), and /i means
make DOS add 3.5" support when the BIOS doesn't have it. If your
5.25" drive is 360K and the hardware doesn't handle 1.2M, use f=2,
even if the 3.5" drive is 1.44M, because the hardware won't support
the double data rate used by 1.44M. But doing this may cause problems
because most 1.44M drives are configured from the factory to detect
the floppy density from the presense or absense of a square hole
opposite the write-protect hole, and you'll probably have to either
try to set the drive jumpers to always use 720K, or you'll have to
tape over that hole. Be sure that the tape is secure and can't snag
and come off inside the drive.

Another way to get 3.5" support is with a device driver program, such
as FDREAD, which should be available as FDREADxx (xx = 14, 16, or 17)
at www.simutel.net or www.computercraft.com .